by Jim Fergus
Later that day, my old friend Gertie rode her mule into our camp. I went out to greet her in front of our lodge, alerted to her arrival by the noises of the small pack of children and dogs at her heels. She was roughly attired in woolen trousers and a man’s coat several sizes too large for her, wore a red bandanna around her neck, and an old cavalry hat that had been refashioned to a style quite beyond Army regulations, and was jauntily festooned with eagle feathers.
“Damn, honey,” Gertie said to me, sliding off her mount, “it’s a lucky thing I got a chin strap on this here old hat of mine, or I’d a been relieved of it for sure by now. There ain’t nothin’ an Injun likes moren’ a hat, an’ don’t ask me why.”
Gertie reached into a pocket of her coat and pulled out a handful of hard candies, which she passed out to the children, who chattered gaily and crowded closer around her. “Shoo, now,” she said to them, “scoot! I want to talk to the Missus in peace. No, I awready told ya, ya can’t have my goddamn hat!” Gertie removed her hat and slapped it against her thigh, raising a cloud of dust. Her hair was sweated and matted greasily on her head, flattened and whorled like the bedding place of a deer in high grass. Her face was streaked with dirt. It was not the first time I have noticed Gertie’s lack of attention to matters of personal cleanliness; indeed she possessed a distinct odor that could compete with that of any unwashed savage. I gave her a big hug nevertheless, for I was very glad to see her.
“Damn, but ain’t this here a dusty godforsaken country, honey?” she asked. “Coyote ugly, too. I prefer that grass country up north where you been summerin’. You know I trailed you half the goddamn summer with the half-breed scout Big Bat Pourrier. Not a bad sidekick as half-breeds go, old Big Bat. Good tracker, and he never once tried to make no play on me, if you get my meanin’ …”
I was less astonished by this latter bit of information than the former. “Why did you do that, Gertie?” I asked. “Follow us all summer?”
“The Cap’n asked me to keep an eye on you, honey,” she said. “He was awful worried about you, especially after I reported back to him last time—after the little whiskey party. I told him you was makin’ out just fine. I figured they would a drunk up all their whiskey that night. One thing about Injuns is that if there’s any whiskey around, they’ll drink it all up just as fast as they can. Once it’s gone and they can’t lay their hands on no more that’s the end of it. That’s about how I figured it would go.”
I nodded my head. “But you stopped trailing us after we made our encampment on the Tongue, is that correct?” I asked.
“Yup, figured by then things was goin’ real good for you,” Gertie said, “so I come back to report in to the Cap’n.”
“And since you seem to be in the regular employment of Captain Bourke, Gertie,” I said, “may I assume that you’ve come now with news from him?”
“You can assume exactly that, honey,” Gertie said. “He wants to see you. Wants you to meet him underneath the south side of the Platte River bridge this evening after supper. Wants you to wear your white woman duds so as not to attract attention in case anyone spots you two together.”
I laughed. “Yes, I suppose it would hardly do for the good Captain to be seen fraternizing with a squaw. Especially the Big Chief’s squaw. Unfortunately, I have no white woman clothing, Gertie. I’ve given them all away. They seemed … shall we say … unsuitable to our present circumstances.”
“Sure, I know just what ya mean, honey,” Gertie said. She looked down at her own outfit. “Hell, I suppose I could loan you my duds. I ain’t much for dresses, white woman or Injun, but I’d sure be willin’ to swap you for a spell.”
“That’s very kind of you, Gertie,” I said quickly, “but it won’t be necessary.” Although forced to give up many of the standards of civilized hygiene which I once took for granted, I was still not prepared to don Dirty Gertie’s aromatic outfit. “The Captain will simply have to receive me in my everyday squaw attire. Please relate to him that I will be at the bridge at the designated hour.”
“Will do, honey,” she said. Then she scuffed her boot in the dirt. “Well hell, ain’t ya goin’ to invite me in to set a spell? I figured we’d have some visitin’ to do, you and me? Catchin’ up.”
I smiled tenderly at Gertie, realizing that in my distraction at the idea of seeing John Bourke again in private, I had hurt her feelings, treating her as a messenger rather than a friend. “Of course we do,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be rude, Gertie. Please, do come in, the ladies will be happy to see you again.”
“Honey,’fore we set down, with the others,” Gertie said, “why don’t we get one thing over with first, private like. I got a hunch you have a question you’re wantin’ to ask me.”
“A question?” I asked. “You mean regarding John Bourke?”
Gertie nodded. “He broke off his engagement to the Bradley gal, if that’s what you’re wonderin’,” she said. “She went back to her mother in New York.”
None of the few pedestrians or drivers of the occasional wagon that passed along the road paid the least bit of attention to one more squaw woman, wrapped modestly in a Hudson Bay trade blanket, as she made her way across the rickety Platte River bridge. On the far side I looked about quickly to be certain that I was not observed and then ducked down the narrow footpath through the willows toward the river’s bank.
John Bourke was already waiting for me there. As yet unobserved, I stopped to watch him for a moment, to try to still the pounding of my heart. He stood facing the slow torpid river, his hands clasped behind his back, apparently lost in a reverie. Because I could not bear to see the look of disappointment in his face that I had not metamorphosed back into the comely and properly dressed young white woman with whom he had once recited Shakespeare, I spoke first.
“Do not turn to look at me, Captain,” I said.
“Why do you ask this?” he inquired, starting, but he did not turn.
“Because I am as you last saw me,” I said. “I am still attired as a savage and I cannot bear the look of revulsion on your face.”
And then he did turn. And looking thoroughly distraught, his dark brow riding low over his eyes in a storm of self-reproach, he said: “Forgive me, madam. My behavior toward you was intolerable. It was a shock to see you again after so many months.”
I laughed. “Ah, yes, a shock,” I said. “Indeed! And to see me then dressed as the enemy. How difficult that must have been for you, Captain!”
“You have every right to be angry with me, madam,” he said. “I should not have expected you to be otherwise attired. However, I hope you will believe me when I tell you that it was not revulsion that you saw in my face.”
“No?” I asked, approaching him. “And what was it, Captain, that I mistook for revulsion?”
He moved toward me and took my hands in his. His fingers were strong and rough but his touch as gentle as I remembered it. And his eyes softened as he looked into mine with a look that I also remembered. “Heartbreak, perhaps,” he said.
“Heartbreak?” I asked, the blood rising to my cheeks. “I’m afraid that I don’t understand you, Captain. Heartbreak at my descent into paganism?”
“No, May, heartbreak that you now belong to another man,” he answered, “to another people. Once, for the briefest moment, you belonged to me. I let you slip away. What you saw in my face was the look of a man filled with regret for his failures, with self-loathing for his own weakness.”
Then I went forward into John Bourke’s arms, or he brought me into them, I do not know which … I think that neither of us had intended this to happen, particularly not he, whose moral rectitude would hardly allow the embrace of a married woman, but we are like magnets, he and I, and clung to each other, and did not speak … for there were no satisfactory words to be said.
I squeezed my eyes shut to keep from spilling tears, but still they fell about his neck and I felt their wetness on my cheek. “John,” I whispered. “Dear John. How could we have known
…”
“I had you, May,” he said, “and I let you go. For that I shall never forgive myself.”
“And I left you, John,” I said. “There could have been no other way. There can be no other way.”
The trade blanket had fallen about my feet and as the Captain’s arms enveloped me, there was little between the soft, supple skin of the antelope hide from which my garment was so loosely fashioned, and my own skin. We could feel each other … the at once familiar contours of our bodies fitting themselves into one form, one being …
And then at the same moment we both released our embrace. And into my breast rose the terrible weightless sense of falling from a cliff.
The Captain spoke first, with a kind of husky ferocity in his voice, “This cannot be, May,” he said. “You are married to another.”
“Of course it can’t, John,” I said, and I thought my flushed heart would explode in a thousand pieces, “for I am also having his child.”
At this he smiled, and stepped toward me again, as if the fact itself released us for that moment from our need for one another. He placed his large hand, his fingers spread, upon my belly as gently as if he were touching the child itself. “I’m very happy for you, May,” he said. “Please believe that.”
I put my own hand atop his. “Four months so, I make it, John. Isn’t it strange where life leads us?”
“‘What fates impose, that men must needs abide;’” he quoted, “‘It boots not to resist both wind and tide.’
“God, I’ve missed you, May,” he said. “I’ve never stopped thinking of you.”
“Nor I you, John,” I said. “And what of your fiancée? What of Lydia Bradley? Gertie tells me you’ve sent her back East.”
“Honor dictated that I could not in good faith any longer marry her,” he said. “I had fallen in love with you, May. I had lain with you.”
“Oh, John, you torture yourself with your damnable sense of honor,” I said, “your inflexible Catholic doctrine. She was a pleasant enough young lady, and would have made you a good wife. And you, her, a fine husband.”
“Always the practical one, aren’t you, May?” John said. And he smiled his old crooked wry smile, his weathered eyes crinkling in the corners. “‘Pleasant enough’ is faint praise. In any case she was far too sensitive to be wife to an old Army rat such as myself.”
“She’d have been the luckiest woman on earth, John,” I said.
“And you, May?” he asked. “How has your luck been running? Tell me, are you in love with your husband? Are you happy in your ‘arranged’ marriage?”
“I make those three separate questions, Captain,” I said. “To the first I would answer that my luck has been mixed. To the second that, yes, I love and honor my husband, Little Wolf. He is a good man and a fine provider for his family. But I am not ‘in love’ as I think you mean. I do not love him as I once loved you … for how could that be so?
“And finally to the question of my happiness, as our mutual friend Gertie once put it, I would answer that ‘happiness is a highly overrated human condition invented by white folks.’”
Bourke laughed then, the rich deep laugh that broke my heart to hear again. “A line worthy of the Bard!” he said. “She’s a fine piece of work, our Gertie, isn’t she though?”
“Yes, she is,” I said, “and she’s been a dear friend to me.”
“But your life among the savages, May?” he asked in a more serious tone. “How does it go for you? You know that I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“And have sent Gertie to watch over me,” I said. “I know, John, for which solicitude I am deeply grateful. She arrived the first time at a propitious moment … and left the second time only a moment too soon …”
The Captain’s face filled again with darkness. “What do you mean by that, May?” he asked. “Gertie said that you were in good health, adapting well to your new circumstances. Has something happened?”
“I was, John, and I have,” I said, aware that any description of our abduction by the Crow horse thieves could only needlessly torture him. “It is only that, as you yourself warned us, it is a strange and sometimes terrifying life we lead among these people. One of our girls, my little friend Sara, has been killed in an accident.”
John touched my face tenderly with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry, May,” he said. “I know how you cared for her.”
“Other than that we have, most of us, endured,” I said.
“I should say that you’ve at least done so,” he said. “Why just look at you, May, fit and brown as a native. If anything you are even more beautiful than I remembered you. I think life in the out-of-doors must agree with you.”
“I admit that it has benefits, as well as its discomforts,” I said. “Mostly, John, it’s been like living a dream, like a suspension of real life. But coming back here and seeing you again … I have been abruptly awakened from the dream.”
“Your dream is not over yet, May,” Bourke said in a serious tone. He turned his back to me and looked out over the river. “You know that I have asked you here for another reason than my desire to see you again.”
“I suspected as much, Captain,” I said. “Gertie informs me that the government is abandoning us.”
“No, not abandoning,” Bourke said quickly, turning back to me. “Not as long as General Crook has anything to say in the matter.”
“And does General Crook have anything to say in the matter?” I asked.
“The Army has been put in a thankless position, May,” he answered. “The pendulum has swung even further since Gertie brought you my news this summer. The geologists with Custer’s expedition have since returned with glowing reports about the gold discovery in the Black Hills. Parties of miners, their passions inflamed by the prospect of easy riches, are even now making their way toward the region. The Army has been charged with the impossible task of trying to intercept them in order to defend the terms of the Fort Laramie treaty. Of course, this situation is untenable and cannot continue. Public sentiment, fueled by a righteous press, demands that the Black Hills be made safe for white settlers, and the Indians driven from the land.”
“Driven from the land?” I asked. “But they believe that they own the Black Hills—indeed, do own them. The Sioux have already been to see us, John. They are forming war parties against the invading miners. It’s only a matter of time until some of our people join them.”
“Yes, and for this reason and upon the recommendation of Inspector Watkins of the Indian Bureau,” the Captain said, “the War Department has been instructed to bring in the remaining free savages, both Sioux and Cheyennes, and to see to their settlement on reservations, which plan is effective immediately.”
“I begin to understand why the Army is in collaboration with that wretched little Frenchman,” I said. “You sanction the swindling of the savages in trade in order that, like obedient children, they be forced to throw themselves upon the mercy of their benevolent Great White Father.”
“Exactly so,” said Captain Bourke, nodding. “A peaceful resolution that can be greatly expedited by you and your friends—by encouraging your husbands to give themselves and their families up at the agencies with as much dispatch as possible.”
“And, of course, the decision to deny them any further arms and ammunition,” I added, “has been made as a precaution in the event that our efforts toward this end fail?”
The Captain did not avoid my eyes when he answered. He nodded glumly. “A campaign under the direction of General Crook is currently being organized—its purpose to round up all those hostiles who have not voluntarily complied by the first day of February 1876. As Chief Little Wolf’s wife, May, you are in a unique position to facilitate the process—and possibly save many lives by doing so.”
“Ah, so now you’ve come to believe that the Brides for Indians program is a useful one after all,” I said.
“I believe as I have from the beginning,” said Bourke, “that it is a contempti
ble and immoral program that has put you and your friends at tremendous risk. But it is nevertheless in place, you are in the field, and yes, can now be useful.”
“My husband is under the impression that as long as the Cheyennes remain on the land that has been given them ‘forever’ by official treaty, they commit no trespass,” I said.
“President Grant has recently dispatched a commission to negotiate the purchase of the Black Hills and the surrounding country from the Cheyennes and the Sioux,” said the Captain.
“And if they choose not to sell?” I asked.
“As you may have learned in your travels with them, May,” he said, “the savages are hardly united among themselves—even one tribe such as yours has many different factions and many leaders. Rest assured that the President’s commission will find someone among the Sioux and the Cheyennes who will be willing to negotiate this sale—after which time all others who remain on the land will be considered trespassers by the United States Army.”
“God, it’s despicable, isn’t it?” I said in a low voice.
“But necessary, I’m afraid,” said the Captain. “It is the inevitable course of history.”
“And if we are unsuccessful in persuading the Cheyennes to come into the agency before the appointed date,” I asked, “will you hunt us down, then John? Shall we be enemies?”
“That must not happen, May,” said the Captain firmly. “I’m telling you this in order to avoid any such unthinkable situation. Your husband, Little Wolf, has already requested an audience with General Crook. Perhaps you can exercise some positive influence over the chief.”
“My husband wishes to discuss the matter of the remaining brides that have been promised him by the Great White Father,” I said. “The Cheyennes may be heathens Captain, but they can count, and the shortage has not escaped my husband’s attention.”